Defense Secretary Robert Gates told hundreds of airmen at Seymour-Johnson AFB, N.C., there’s the possibility that Osama bin Laden’s death “could be a game changer” in Afghanistan. “Bin Laden and [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar had a very close personal relationship. There are others in the Taliban who have felt betrayed by al Qaeda, that it was because of al Qaeda’s attack on the United States that the Taliban got thrown out of Afghanistan. So we’ll have to see what that relationship looks like,” Gates said Friday. He said, however, it could take up to six months to determine the full effect of the terrorist leader’s death. US special forces killed bin Laden May 1 inside his compound in the military town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, roughly 35 miles north of Islamabad. (Gates transcript) (See also AFPS report by Jim Garamone)
The Air Force on March 12 awarded contract modifications worth a combined $2.4 billion to Boeing to procure an undisclosed number of E-7 Wedgetail as part of the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase and continue work on the airborne battle management aircraft’s radar.